


Life on Mars Drabbles

by falsteloj



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Community: lifein1973, Double Drabble, Drabble, Drabble Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-11-02 17:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10949196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsteloj/pseuds/falsteloj
Summary: Responses to the Life in 1973 drabble challenges.





	1. Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> '[Regret](http://lifein1973.dreamwidth.org/7022883.html)'

Gene Hunt didn’t believe in regrets. You made your choices and then you stuck by them, no matter how difficult.

No matter how bloody miserable they might make you.

Sam suggested once - and once only - that he could start again. Go to court for a piece of paper and set the both of them free, him and the Missus.

Gene punched him for it.

He punched Sam a lot as it went, the action a substitute for what he really wanted to do to him. The bruises they left a substitute for the marks of ownership Gene ached to leave across his pale skin.

That time Sam didn’t even hit him back.

He shook his head instead, judging and disappointed, and it was that look Gene thought of when the news filtered through that he was never going to see Sam again.

The Missus laid a hand on his arm, a show of silent solidarity, and told him three weeks later that she had filed for a piece of paper of her own, and that she hoped he would be happy someday.

Gene remembered hearing those words on another’s lips and said nothing.

He would only end up regretting it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, feel free to chat / hit me with prompts over on Tumblr [@serenwib](http://serenwib.tumblr.com/) or Twitter [@falsteloj](https://twitter.com/falsteloj). :)


	2. Rare Pairing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> '[Rare Pairing](http://lifein1973.dreamwidth.org/7023371.html)'

The smell is familiar somehow, overpowering, and Gene stands by the coat rack for a long moment before finally shaking his head and yelling that he’ll be late back on account of the darts match.

His Missus is good like that. She doesn’t nag, doesn’t moan, not like the dragons some of the poor sods at the station are stuck with.

She’s got interests of her own - bridge, bingo, buggering off out all evening - and Gene doesn’t begrudge her it.

It keeps her happy and makes his life easier. Means he can spend his evenings in the pub, guilt free, and devote more time to thinking up new and inventive insults for the lads from the Regional Crime Squad.

“Where is Litton tonight?” Sam asks, “I thought these pointless displays of male bonding were what you lived for?”

“He couldn’t score in a brothel,” Gene quips, gratified by the resulting laughter, though winning would have been all the sweeter for rubbing Litton’s smug face in it.

It’s late when he gets home, dark, and he stumbles into the coat rack, breathing in the scent clinging to the Missus’ jacket.

The recognition hits like a punch to the gut.

 _Paco Rabanne_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, feel free to chat / hit me with prompts over on Tumblr [@serenwib](http://serenwib.tumblr.com/) or Twitter [@falsteloj](https://twitter.com/falsteloj). :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

“I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

Sam’s talking to himself again, manic grin on his face as he gestures widely to someone - something - who isn’t there. Hands not steady as he pushes them into his hair, scrubs at his face, and Gene wishes that he has never seen the like of it before.

That he hadn’t curled his own hands into angry fists, unable and unwilling to understand what it was that drove Stu into the embrace of ignorance and hallucination.

That he hadn’t given in and dialled for help with trembling fingers, frightened by the glassy blankness in his wife’s gaze and the things she told him when she opened her mouth, things nobody could know, not by his reckoning.

He visits her every Sunday, the hospital scent of the place thick and cloying, and she only stares into the middle distance. Blinks, unresponsive, when he fills the silence, and turns her head away, slow but determined, when he attempts to apologise.

She’s still in there, somewhere, beneath the shock therapy and the medication. Blames him, Gene doesn’t doubt, for what they put her through, because he had been the one to get down on one knee, and to pledge in health and in sickness.

It’s for her that he turns a blind eye. Plays dumb when he’s asked what he proposes to do about his fruitcake of a DI, and acts stupid when Sam gets hysterical, sobbing and screaming and threatening to throw himself from the roof of the station.

Sam needs help, he knows that. Needs more than his rough appeals to pull himself together and an occasional clap on the shoulder. It’s the best Gene can offer though, the most he can allow himself, and as he pretends, yet again, that he hasn’t seen, hasn’t heard, he hopes against hope that he’s doing the right thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, feel free to chat / hit me with prompts over on Tumblr [@serenwib](http://serenwib.tumblr.com/) or Twitter [@falsteloj](https://twitter.com/falsteloj). :)


	4. Try

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble written in 2012 for the prompt 'memories'. (Actually moving it here from a separate post, because it makes sense to!)

The missus, she’d tried. Tried to make him happy, tried to make things better. But, in the end, it hadn’t made the slightest bit of difference.

After,  _after_  he had given up hope of Sam coming back and the world had changed so much Sam’s nonsense ideas were official procedure, she had gone and got a job and started trying to make herself happy. He hadn’t even noticed it was happening.

She still sends him a card at Christmas signed from her and what’s his name, and he knows that he should at least feel something about that. 

He tries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, feel free to chat / hit me with prompts over on Tumblr [@serenwib](http://serenwib.tumblr.com/) or Twitter [@falsteloj](https://twitter.com/falsteloj). :)


End file.
